‘Frequency is Freedom’: High-Quality Transit is Important — but in America, it’s lacking

Between ’09 and ’19, passengers using public transit in Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver rose, at 23%, 32% and 42% respectively — and, across Canada as a whole. Meanwhile, in most U.S. cities, it dropped during that same period, as automotive ownership increased and gas prices dropped.

There’s a simple explanation: in Canada, cities run more service, more frequently, for more of the day.

To help understand this, we reviewed several thousand routes’ schedules and organized them into categories of 10, 20, or 30 minutes, or longer, based on the service provided between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. on weekdays. Then, we added an additional requirement that the route runs some sort of weekend service. This provides a standardized look into how cities’ run their service.

(You can read our methodology below).

Take a look at Toronto, Edmonton and Montréal:

Toronto

10 minutes
20 minutes
30 minutes
Longer

Montréal

10 minutes
20 minutes
30 minutes
Longer

Edmonton

10 minutes
20 minutes
30 minutes
Longer

Halifax

10 minutes
20 minutes
30 minutes
Longer

Meanwhile, in comparable U.S. cities, there’s much less frequently-run service.

Look at Denver, Nashville and San Diego:

Denver

10 minutes
20 minutes
30 minutes
Longer

Nashville

10 minutes
20 minutes
30 minutes
Longer

San Diego

10 minutes
20 minutes
30 minutes
Longer

Methodology

To map these routes, we had to come up with a standard set of criteria:

Furthermore, to make our review simpler (and due to technical limitations), we looked at branched routes a bit differently — we looked at the trunk and the branch, and based the entire routes’ frequency on whichever is longer.

And, a couple things to keep in mind: